May 11, 2009 Posted by Tiffany

Meet our newest acquisition

Now that all the paperwork has finally been finished, I’d like to introduce you to our new orchard! Our name for it perhaps is a bit dramatic since it’s only around 1000 sq. meters or a quarter of an acre. But it’s only 10 minutes walk from our front door and has 19 apple, cherry and peach trees growing on it, most of which are young trees. When we started looking at the property about 2... read more

Apr 3, 2009 Posted by Ayla the Newfie

Decorating with your bush & shrub trimmings

Spring has sprung in Germany and the weather this week has simply been GLORIOUS! We’ve had highs in the 60′s and 70′s…and this weekend it’s supposed to be up to 80F. Hard to imagine that spring is truly here after our -18C winter – but hopefully this lovely start to spring is just a taste of what is to come. We deserve it! The trees, bushes and shrubs are in full bloom... read more

Mar 23, 2009 Posted by Tiffany

Trees, tripods and other random stuff

I’ve been in a cleaning frenzy today. We’re trying out a new system here where I use Monday as my “get the house back in order after the bomb went off weekend is over.” We’re usually so busy focusing on getting big projects done that the house is in disarray and there are fur tumbleweeds all over the place. There’s always a huge pile of laundry, lots of dishes and also... read more

Mar 31, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

Our seedlings are indeed seedlings!

As usual I’m a bit overdue to write about what is happening with our little seedlings – but what can you do? I did take some photos of them on March 18th which was about a month after they’d been planted. As you may notice, the zucchini were sprouting like weeds and most of the tomato seeds had popped up as well. I took some new photos this morning because we already needed to start... read more

Oct 6, 2007 Posted by Tiffany

Cayenne harvesting

We got quite a few nice peppers from our cayenne plants despite not really giving much love or attention to them. We decided to harvest a few of the peppers before we went away last week and hung them up in our kitchen to dry. We tried a little piece of one of them in our chicken penne arrabiata dish the other night but probably could have used a tiny bit more. Stefan tried them once before and they were... read more

Aug 16, 2007 Posted by Tiffany

Eggplants, chilies and tomatoes – oh my!

Once again it’s been a while since our last garden update so here goes… I mentioned once or twice that we are giving our lettuce a try in window boxes along our courtyard and at the front of the house. These are the plants by the courtyard which are really thriving. They apparently get just enough sun during the day and I water them all the time too. We’re looking forward to starting to... read more

Aug 10, 2007 Posted by Tiffany

Housewarming plants

Last weekend we had a rather large housewarming party at our house with about 50 guests and 15 kids…it was definitely a pretty big deal and we were completely blessed to have gorgeous weather which allowed us to have the party outside. One of the things I find great about housewarming parties (this was our second) is that you often get plants as gifts. Some people might find this annoying or not want... read more

Aug 6, 2007 Posted by Tiffany

The housewarming party

We had our housewarming party here on Saturday night and although it was a lot of fun, we’re both happy to have it behind us now. We ended up with about 50 guests and around 15 children ranging in age from a few weeks to 5 years old. Nearly everyone who said they’d be attending made it here and a few that we didn’t invite too…but I’ll come back to that later. One of the things... read more

Jul 24, 2007 Posted by Tiffany

Tomatoes galore

So far, everything is still thriving in the greenhouse and our tomatoes are now showing some massive signs of life. Here’s a general view when you glance in the direction of the tomatoes…. As you can probably notice (click on the image to make it larger), we have lots of little tomatoes all over our plants finally. I think the drastic pruning really helped even though we probably did wait a... read more

Jul 19, 2007 Posted by Tiffany

Our new fig tree and how to grow figs

I can’t believe I didn’t write about this sooner but I guess I’ve had other things on my mind… When Stefan’s family was here two weeks ago, his aunt brought us a lovely little fig tree. It has several figs on it and I would say that they are beginning to ripen as well….but I thought I better do a bit more research about the plant before I do something wrong ... read more